


go pay the waiter (let's leave)

by biblionerd07



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Date Night, Established Relationship, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Mild Smut, More like pre-smut, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 07:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6319795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Bucky try to have a night out. The key word is try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	go pay the waiter (let's leave)

Back before the war (Before—it’s always capitalized in Steve’s head), Bucky loved getting dressed up and going out. He’d preened under the attention he got from crowds in the dancehalls and he’d preened under the attention he got from Steve when he got all dressed up and danced and flirted with other people.

Now? Well, now it’s been a long time since they’ve gone out. First, Steve was recovering in the hospital and Bucky was in the wind. Then Steve was recovering in the hospital and Bucky was by his side. Maybe, Bucky likes to remind him, he should try staying out of the hospital for a while, just to switch things up.

But now they’re both alive and no one’s internal organs are being held inside by stitches and Steve wants to take Bucky out. Bucky is a bit dubious about the whole idea.

“What if someone recognizes us?” He asks skeptically.

“Then we’ll leave,” Steve says with a shrug.

“What if they’re HYDRA?”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Wasn’t your job cleanup? Didn’t think you left many of them around, buddy.”

Bucky huffs. “I _didn’t_.”

“Okay then.”

Bucky worries his lip between his teeth. “What if the restaurant seats us by a window?”

“I’ll ask ‘em not to,” Steve says firmly.

“What if I get sick?”

“I’ll sue ‘em.”

That gets a teensy little laugh out of Bucky, though he rolls his eyes about it. Steve gives him one of those hopeful smiles he perfected when he weighed ninety pounds and wanted Bucky to quit nagging him about his bad habit of picking fights with the scabs outside union meetings.

“Come on, Buck, can’t I want a date with my best guy?”

Bingo. The emotional appeal train has left the station and is rolling down the track. Bucky’s shoulders drop a little and he gives Steve a chagrined look.

“I really thought I woulda built up a tolerance to your bullshit after all this time.”

Steve grins at him. “Nah. You just pretend you did.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Fine, we’ll go out, you bastard.”

Steve arches an eyebrow. “My mother was married and you know it.”

Bucky puts him in a headlock and gives him a noogie, but Steve thinks it’s worth it.

 

Once Bucky gets on board with the idea, he goes full steam ahead, of course. He gives Steve firm instructions to “clean up nice” and says, “I’ll pick you up at six.”

“We live together,” Steve points out. “How does picking me up work?”

“Just ‘cause we live together doesn’t mean romance is dead,” Bucky scolds, and it almost gives Steve vertigo for a minute because Bucky used to say that _all the time_ Before. “I’ll go somewhere else for the day and come get you.”

“But wait, _I_ asked _you_ out,” Steve reminds him. “Shouldn’t I pick you up?”

“I think the kids today call that fragile masculinity,” Bucky says, and then Steve rants for a while about fragile masculinity and realizes Bucky tricked him into accepting his version of the plans. Steve can’t figure out why Bucky’s so much better at that than he is. It’s probably because of HYDRA, and Steve really thinks it says something about his healing that he can just roll his eyes at the thought and not want to cry.

So he does as he’s told and he showers and he shaves and he even uses a little bit of the gel Natasha bullied him into buying to style his hair—not much, just to sort of fluff it all out the way she taught him.

“It’s called artfully mussed,” she’d told him, entirely too grave to actually be serious, but a flattering number of people had stared at him on the street without even realizing who he was, so he figures it’s a good look. He puts on the clothes Sam chose for him that he thinks maybe Natasha collaborated on, if the tightness of the pants is anything to go off, and then he checks his watch.

He still has twenty minutes until Bucky’s supposed to get there. He sighs. He doesn’t want to sit on the couch, because he’s not actually completely sure he’ll be able to get back up in these pants, but he doesn’t want to wait in the entryway like he’s overeager.

Even if he maybe _is_ overeager because Bucky made good on his promise to be somewhere else and has been gone _all day long_. Steve hasn’t seen him in over twelve hours and the slight panic in his stomach is something he’s not going to tell his therapist about.

He only has to wait five minutes before there’s a knock on the door. He counts to ten before he crosses the room to open it, just because, and there’s Bucky, looking so good in an all-black suit Steve’s mouth goes a little dry.

Bucky gives him that slow, seductive smirk that’s been lighting Steve’s fire since the Great Depression and nods a little.

“Thought you’d probably be ready early,” he says. “Couldn’t wait to go out with me, huh?”

“No,” Steve says honestly, dropping the teasing act and loving the way Bucky ducks his head, bashful like he always gets when Steve’s being sweet. Before, Steve was always so full of piss and vinegar that sweet talk caught Bucky off guard.

“Well, then, let’s start our date,” Bucky says, sticking out his elbow adorably for Steve to take. Steve has seen this man vomit all over himself and once, during a brush with dysentery during the war, shit his pants, and he still can’t help but be charmed. He thinks it’ll probably always be that way and doesn’t mind one bit.

Bucky holds his hand all the way through the subway ride and for once it feels more like regular couple hand-holding and less like Bucky is grimly forcing himself to make it through the trip without killing anyone. He even manages to talk to Steve on the way there and it makes Steve feel all gooey inside.

Some old lady keeps looking at them, quick glances from the corner of her eye, and Steve’s puffing himself up, ready to fight, when she catches his eye and smiles.

“You two are very cute,” she says, and his feathers go down and he smiles back at her.

“Thanks,” he says, and Bucky muffles his laugh in Steve’s shoulder because this poor woman has no idea how narrowly she avoided a full-blown Episode.

So, between the suit and the way Bucky’s got his hair pulled into a bun at the nape of his neck and the hand-holding and the tickle of Bucky’s eyelashes against his neck, Steve is feeling pretty happy by the time they get to the restaurant. The waiter seats them in a corner with no windows and Bucky takes a seat with his back to the wall and suddenly they’re looking at each other across a white tablecloth and a basket of bread and Steve’s tongue sticks in his mouth a little.

Bucky is so _beautiful_ , with a few lines around his mouth and the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles, those eyes so blue Steve’s searched for years for the right combination of colors and hasn’t been able to replicate the color. He’s still holding Steve’s hand, and his thumb’s making sweeping circles on Steve’s skin, the metal plates warm with the temperature of the room around them.

His black shirt is stretched across his shoulders perfectly and Steve wants to rip it off him. He wants to scatter those buttons across the hardwood floors in their apartment. The top three are already undone, because Bucky can’t stand to button anything up too tight around his throat and ties are most certainly out. It wouldn’t even be hard to pop the rest of them off.

Those _pants_ though—Steve would unbutton and unzip them only as far as he had to but he’d leave them on because _sweet Jesus_ they look amazing. He has no doubt Bucky’s well aware of this fact; he’s always been a sharp dresser and he knows what gets Steve going. He’s still rubbing those circles across Steve’s hand and the feel of his metal fingers against Steve’s skin is driving Steve a little wild.

“Let’s go home,” Steve blurts out.

“Thought you wanted a date night,” Bucky says, like he’s not rubbing his foot up Steve’s leg in a move tactically created to get Steve hot.

“We’ll try again some other time,” Steve growls, and there go Bucky’s pupils, blowing so wide his eyes turn almost black.

“Can I get you anything to start off?” The waiter asks.

“We’ll take the check,” Steve manages to say, not taking his eyes off Bucky and the way he’s licking his lips.

There’s a pause. “You haven’t ordered anything,” the waiter points out.

“Right.” Steve throws a few bills down anyway, for the trouble, because he did a stint as a waiter, a career cut short not due to his poor health, surprisingly, but because of his poor temper, unsurprisingly.

“Okay?” The waiter says confusedly to their backs. Steve gets a cab, because he _knows_ another train ride will kill the mood, and Bucky slides his hand up and down Steve’s thigh the whole way so by the time they get up the stairs to their front door Steve’s practically panting. Bucky grabs Steve’s ass while Steve tries to get the front door unlocked, and he _squeezes_ and Steve can’t help the little sound that comes out of his throat.

“These are some damn fine pants,” Bucky says, right in Steve’s ear, his breath hot on Steve’s neck, and Steve’s two seconds from abandoning the keys and the door and just getting down to business right there against the hallway wall.

But thankfully, the key slides into place and he shoves the door open with more force than he should and he turns and grabs two handfuls of Bucky’s shirt and hauls him inside. He pauses for one second.

“Are you real attached to this shirt?” He asks, because wasting clothes with abandon is a habit he just can’t quite get into and there’s the whole complication of Bucky not having much to call his own for so long that Steve doesn’t want to take that away from him. Bucky doesn’t even ask for clarification, just moans a little and shakes his head, spreading his arms to give Steve more room to work with.

The buttons make a very satisfying clacking sound as they ping to the floor, and Steve sets to work on those fantasies that flashed through his head at the table. Turns out Bucky’s also on board with the shirtless-but-pants-on idea, even if they both end up with the imprint of a seam on the inside of their legs.

After, they’re still lying on the floor, sweaty and curled together, pants finally discarded, and Steve sighs a little into the scarred seam of Bucky’s shoulder.

“Okay,” he says, slightly sheepish. “We really are going to go out on a date. Next weekend?”

Bucky grins like the Cheshire cat. “Oh, sure,” he says. “By all means, let’s do this again.”

Steve makes a face. “I mean it, Buck. We’re going to make it through an entire date.”

“I am real interested in trying that,” Bucky tells him.

Bucky’s right. It doesn’t work. But, as it turns out, neither of them mind too much.

**Author's Note:**

> I was writing this and thinking "I'm totally gonna write the smut!" and then got to that point in the fic and said "Nah, using their imaginations is good for people." The title comes from Chris Young's "Getting You Home" but I know country music is offensive to most people. (HEATHENS.)


End file.
